iOS 14 Hide hidden album feature
iOS 14 improves on the photo hiding feature introduced in previous versions. Until now, to conceal an image of the Pictures you had to select it and use the ‘Hide’ option. This would secrete the image of CameraRoll and the For you section, but still display it in the The albums section, in the “Hidden” folder (Sick!).
In iOS 14, you can also hide the “ hidden album ”, thus getting almost complete privacy for photos that you don’t want to show, but don’t want to delete. I used the term “almost” because even with the album hidden out of view, the hidden photos will still appear in the photo selection area of third-party apps.
A good example is when you want to add a photo on social media or edit it with an editing app. The “Hidden” album will appear when you browse your photos to extract your image from the Photos app.
9 steps to really hide photos on iPhone
How to hide photos
1. Open the Pictures on your iOS 14 / iPadOS 14 device.
2. Tap ‘To select’, available in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Choose one or more photos.
4. Use the Share button, available in the lower left corner of the screen.
5. Press on ‘Hide’, available in the second section of the share sheet menu.
6. Tap “Hide photo” in the prompt that slides down from the bottom of the screen to confirm.
How to hide the hidden album
7. Open the Settings app.
8. Scroll down to Pictures.
9. Scroll down until you reach the “Hidden Album” label. The switch must be deactivated (gray position) for the backrest to be hidden!
Fact: The default iOS 14 setting has the Hidden Album option enabled, which means the folder will show up in Albums, under Utilities.
How to hide videos on iPhone
Can you also hide videos? Yes, all media files shown in Photos can be hidden. The procedure is identical to that described above.
How to view a photo on iPhone
If you reconsider and want to display one or more images normally in the CameraRoll, you need to do the following:
1. Show the hidden album by following steps 7 -> 9 above.
2. Open the hidden album by searching Photos -> Albums -> Utilities (Hidden Album).
3. Tap the hidden photo you want to make public.
4. Use the Share icon, lower left corner of the screen.
5. Scroll down to “Display” in the share sheet menu options.
Locking iPhone photos with passcode or face ID is still not available, but it could perhaps come in future iterations of iOS 14, or why not alongside iOS 15 in 2022 .
Are you hiding photos on your iPhone? Let us know if you prefer this stock feature or if you are using another third party solution.
Related: Do you know that you can caption photos and videos in iOS 14? What about the trick that lets you hide home screen pages?